Larry Feldman is one of those artists who “discovered” Jersey City during the heyday of the 111 First St. era. The old Lorillard factory, which was torn down in 2007, was a haven for artists looking for affordable space in the late 1990s. Feldman, a stained-glass artist, first put down a deposit for the building at 110 First (See story on page TK) and then ended up at 111, where he lived for four and a half years.

He now works in a studio on Halliday Street in the Bergen/Lafayette section of town where lots of artists landed after 111 First was razed.

“Stained glass started as a hobby,” Feldman says. “An old boyfriend of my mom’s was working with stained glass and showed me a couple of things.”

Feldman grew up in Greenwich Village. “When I was a kid in high school, after hours, I would get scrap glass out of the bins at Capital Glass and Sash,” he relates, “and I would practice cutting it.”

Living in Manhattan, he was accustomed to visiting antique shops on Hudson Street, where he acquired an eye for nice things.

Feldman refers to himself as a self-taught, full-time artisan. He has no “day job,” working on commission, making lamps and windows and doing repairs and restorations. He has a very large piece on the third floor of City Hall.

“No other medium deals with light in quite the same fashion that stained glass does,” he says. “Light doesn’t just bounce off surfaces, it is transmitted through.”

It’s a fluid medium. “Stained glass, when installed architecturally, will change throughout the course of the day, depending on the intensity of the light,” he says. “It’s beautiful and magical.”—Kate Rounds